Cat & Mouse
by tuuli-p
Summary: It has been years of hard work, late nights and meticulous planning. Despite all of that, Shizuo is still alive. Izaya refuses to give in, it's just not in his nature. He plans his next attempt, and remembers why he even tries.


A man was reclined on a simple white couch in his apartment, rolling a pair of dice continuously in his left hand. His eyes were lazily set on the high ceilings of his flat, loosing himself to his thoughts yet again. He looked beautiful on that couch, and his blank expression even made him look serene. To someone who didn't know him, he looked peaceful.

Anyone who knew Izaya Orihara knew that he was a man devoid of peace. Anyone who knew him very well could easily spot that he was plotting.

That night had been filled with broken traffic signs, a crushed cigarette, and an ultimately failed attempt on Shizuo Heiwajima's life.

He knew that he had approached the situation recklessly. Normally the information broker would take time to plan out an attack on Shizuo, but this had been entirely out of the blue. That blonde hair stuck out in crowds, it was easy to find the bastard anywhere, even when you weren't looking for him. Izaya found himself retrying a classic method, simply running at him with a knife. He went into the fight knowing that he would not succeed, having his past run-ins with knives end in failure. It was banal by now. Izaya would slash a few times and miss, Shizuo would throw ungodly amounts of heavy objects, and ultimately no one would win or loose. It was redundant.

Redundancy was something Izaya Orihara hated and adored, in humans at least. He found it amusing when someone with a repetitive life filled with pedestrian events fell into depression. Like that girl he didn't even bother remembering the name of, the one who thought she wanted to jump off a building over something silly with her parents. Her life was a redundant scream of normal occurrences, there was nothing new happening to her that she wasn't used to. Yet, she found herself slipping away and deluded herself into thinking she wanted to die. And it was absolutely intriguing! Izaya wanted to know why humans ticked like that, why nothing would send them on downward spirals, and what sort of nothing brought them to their knees. He hated the redundancy only because he thought that the human race could do better. They could excel more, they could endure more. If he really thought about it though, if humans weren't so weak they probably wouldn't be half as interesting as they currently were. Maybe redundancy wasn't so bad, for humans.

The problem came in that he did not believe that Shizuo was human. It wasn't a speculation grounded on the fact that the man could probably pick up a small house if he put his mind to it, it was a speculation founded on how he actually acted. Though Izaya himself did not comply with the regulations of normal human behavior, Shizuo was totally off the wall. The brute acted out every time he had a chance to throw something and then went around proclaiming that he actually didn't like violence? What a sham. The monster didn't want to accept that he was a monster, and that was a big factor in why Izaya was disgusted by him.

He admired Celty much more. She was a monster. As a general rule, Izaya hated monsters. They preyed upon his precious humans. He could respect a monster like Celty more than Shizuo because Celty could openly admit that she was a monster. That was something his rival had never done, and his denial of the truth was grotesque through Izaya's eyes.

A small laugh escaped his lips, a throaty one. It nearly sounded like a croak. But that one fact was what was keeping him going through this long fight. It was one true triumph that he had to hold over Shizuo's head, because Izaya knew Shizuo was a monster and the wannabe-bartender had no clue. Maybe it was because of his job in information gathering, but the truth was something he held a high value for. He never told Shizuo that he was a monster simply because him not knowing was the best way for Izaya to "win" without having to kill him. Of course, he still yearned to kill him, but this small victory would do for the time being.

He had ruminated enough on his analysis of Shizuo, and the black haired man took a stand and a stretch. His eyes lazily glanced around the silent room. Of course, he was alone. No one would voluntarily live with someone that was quite as twisted as Izaya Orihara. If anyone did, they would be subjected to his philosophical monologues and questionably legal schemes.

But he still spoke as if someone was there. "Hm, maybe next time I'll be the one dropping vending machines on his head... I'm sure there's a rooftop out there somewhere with a vending machine close to the edge. All it would take is a little push-" He flicked a finger, as if he had the power to shove a vending machine down with one, "And bam. No more Shizu-chan."

It was an impractical plan, and another laugh followed. He sure did crack himself up, it was a shame that no one was ever there to watch his sadistic comedy show.

As his thoughts deepened, he began to pace the room, continuing to roll the dice in his hand. The faint clashing noises the plastic made when hitting each other was calming to him, and it helped him think better. "Hm... I'm running out of ideas. I don't wanna hurt his brother really, he seems a lot more human than Shizu-chan. Maybe I could blackmail him? Nah, too cliché..."

It wasn't often that he was stumped. While normal people were frustrated with being stumped, Izaya basked in it. It meant that something truly interesting was going on if even he couldn't piece it together. That was another reason he kept his fight with that monster alive, it was another puzzle to piece together. There were thousands of reasons to keep fighting Shizuo. To win, to play the game, to get rid of a monster.

He decided that ultimately, his master plan to kill that cursed blonde was not going to come to mind on that night. But it was no matter, he would wait. It wasn't like he had a real life, or anything better to do. Izaya was a lot of bad things, but his sheer determination to do what he wanted was almost something that could be respected. If he had applied that determination to a more conventional way of living he could have been conventionally praised. But where was the fun in that? His brain was to active for that, and so was his soul. He needed more than the norm, he needed the extraordinary.

So in a twisted way, he loved the monsters that he hated. Monsters were the most extraordinary things in the world after all. Celty and Shizuo were better than any reality television. They did the unexpected. They endangered humans, yes, but it was one hell of a game to play. Izaya wanted nothing more than to be immersed in that world for awhile, and then totally annihilate it. Fascinated as he was by monsters, he had a duty to protect humans from them. It was a duty he entrusted himself with. No one asked him to do it, it was simply what he felt he was meant to do in life.

Izaya set those dice down on a glass table, smirking to himself as he watched the city out of his window. This world truly held so much, and so many opportunities to kill Shizuo Heiwajima. He just hadn't found them quite yet. Until then, he'd keep playing this fun game of cat and mouse.


End file.
